Harden Up -
Protecting Queensland is a Green Cross Australia led
multi-stakeholder partnership to deploy cutting edge social
networking tools and Australia's best climate research to encourage
Queenslanders to assess their vulnerability to key natural disaster
hazards and to take practical action to become more
self-reliant.

The initiative is funded by the Natural Disaster Resilience
Program through Emergency Management Australia and the Queensland
Department of Community Safety. Green Cross partners include:

Local Government Association of Queensland

Insurance Council

Residential Tenancies Aurthority

State Library of Queensland

Suncorp Insurance

CSIRO

Bureau of Meteorology

James Cook University

Channel 10

Federal Department of Climate Change

Property Council of Australia

Volunteering Queensland

Together we are building a world-first disaster resilience
portal through which Australia's latest climate data and
projections will be visualised by Queenslanders to encourage them
to take practical steps to become more self-reliant through major
weather events, embracing sustainability and community engagement
along the way.

Climate change and population growth combine to present new
challenges for Australia's severe weather resilience, testing the
effectiveness of traditional emergency response systems. New
paradigms that leverage private sector and community engagement are
needed in order to encourage self-reliance to growing hazard
exposure.

Social media offers the potential for community interaction with
accessible scientific trends and practical resilience advice. Green
Cross Australia is Australia's leading social media NGO and brings
its community/research/business partnership model to address the
challenge of improving Queensland' disaster resilience.

Harden Up - Protecting
Queensland will build community resilience to severe weather by
raising awareness of hazard exposure through a scalable social
media platform that encourages Queenslanders to:

HardenUp.org's self-reliance message will integrate community
natural hazard resilience and climate mitigation objectives, with a
focus on how to prepare for, survive through and recover
sustainably from major weather events. We will draw on deep
resilience and climate prediction expertise and materials of our
corporate and research partners.